(Photo: EcoWatch)Excitement and speculation have been building for months around Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change, which is due to be released on Thursday following a noon press conference. Now a leaked draft of the document, published Monday in Italian Magazine L’Espresso, has given Vatican watchers and environmentalists something to sink their teeth into, although the Vatican cautioned that this was not the final version, which could be similar or substantially different, and had asked that details of the draft not be published.

The contents of the leaked document, said to be called “Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home,” won’t surprise anyone who has been following the stream of statements the Pope has been making on the environment. But by putting it in the form of an encyclical, the Pope gives official weight to the opinions he’s been expressing in many contexts.

The document addresses the role of fossil fuels on climate change and its outsized impact on poor nations, chastising wealthy countries for their disposable lifestyle. He calls for reducing carbon emissions by developing policies that hasten the switch to clean, renewable sources of energy to stave off the “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem.”

“Humanity is called to take note of the need for changes in lifestyle and changes in methods of production and consumption to combat this warming, or at least the human causes that produce and accentuate it,” he wrote, according to a report by The Guardian. “Numerous scientific studies indicate that the greater part of the global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases … given off above all because of human activity.”

The Pope does not enumerate or analyze the scientific basis of the climate crisis in detail but rather reflects on the moral aspects of humanity’s care for the Earth.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)Republican 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee appears to be, to borrow a phrase from Sarah Palin, "palling around with" child molesters. First it was his vigorous defense of Josh Duggar, and now reports have surfaced that the co-author of two of his books, was excommunicated from his church for being a child molester.

After information that Josh Duggar -- the oldest child in the Duggar family of the television show 19 Kids and Counting – had sexually molested several of his sisters and a babysitter when he was a teenager, Huckabee came forward to vigorously defend Josh, who at the time of the revelations, was a high-profile spokesperson for the Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based Christian conservative lobbying outfit.

On May 22, a day after reports that Duggar had molested his sisters came out, Huckabee posted on Facebook: "Let others run from them. We will run to them with our support."

Last week, during an interview with the Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly, he said that it was all about the media "exploiting" the family. According to the Christian Post, Huckabee "suggested that the family is being targeted for their Christian views, and argued that if the story concerned liberals, it would not have created such a media stir."

Normally elected officials in DC wrap themselves in hackneyed statements when talking about Wall Street. After all, what Washington politician wants to bite the hand that provides a sizable chunk of many candidates' campaign funds?

That's why Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Massachusetts) reaction to a patronizing, sexist remark by JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon was more than a breath of fresh air; it was like a brief release from the prison of "don't-offend-the-finance-industry" beltway jabberwocky.

Earlier this month, Dimon attempted to impugn Warren's knowledge of Wall Street by stating, "I don’t know if she fully understands the global banking system." A number of commentaries rightfully attacked Dimon for "mansplaining." In fact, Dimon - who somehow is still CEO of JP Morgan Chase even though his bank has conceded to several charges of financial wrongdoing in Department of Justice settlements - and his colleagues view Warren as a serious potential threat to their dodgy practices.

By now, you may have likely read Warren's fearlessly frank response to Dimon, as told to The Huffington Post. Warren didn't, like most DC Wall Street pawns, offer a mealy-mouthed statement such as, "I am sure that Mr. Dimon misspoke, and I continue to hold him in high regard."

The California State Water Resources Control Board on Friday ordered the largest cuts on record to “farmers holding some of the state’s strongest water rights,” according to The Guardian. Water officials told senior water rights holders, some of whose rights date back to 1903, to stop pumping water in California’s Sacramento, San Joaquin and delta watersheds.

It’s the first time the state has mandated such a large number of senior rights holders to curtail water use. “It will affect thousands of farmers,” says The Guardian. The last time any restrictions were placed on senior rights holders was during the 1976-77 drought, but “those curtailments were not as geographically widespread as Friday’s,” reports The New York Times. The move has been anticipated for weeks. Jay Lund, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at University of California, Davis, told The Guardian, “The order was both expected and necessary.”

It's a vicious circle of hypocrisy: Americans dependent on the safety net are urged to "get a job" by the same free-market system that pays them too little to avoid being dependent on the safety net.

Theft, Part 1: The Average U.S. Household Pays About $400 for Safety Net Programs for Low-Wage Workers

According to the Economic Policy Institute, $45 billion per year in federal, state, and other safety net support is paid to workers in the bottom 20 percent of wage earners. Thus the average U.S. household is paying almost $400 to employees inlow-wage industries such as food service, retail, and personal care.

Blame: Accusing the Poor

Paul Ryan said that social programs "turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency." But 63 percent of eligible working-age poor Americans are employed, and 73 percent are members of working families. Yet in a show of hypocrisy by some of the leading safety net critics, Congress has killed or blocked or ignored numerous attempts to create better jobs for underemployed Americans.

Greed: Profits for Stockholders, Poverty Wages for Workers

A Demos study found that raising wages to $25,000 per year (about $12.50 per hour) for full-time retail workers would lift 734,075 people out of poverty.

(Photo: EcoWatch)Ever the planetary steward, Pope Francis stressed the importance of food security, good nutrition and reducing food waste at the 39th United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference at the Vatican yesterday.

“Statistics on waste are very concerning: a third of food products end up under this heading,” the Pope said in front of representatives from more than 120 countries, citing FAO data showing the magnitude of edible food produced on the planet that is lost or wasted.

The Pontiff also voiced concerns over large-scale acquisitions of agricultural land by multinational companies and governments.

“Climate change rightly worries us, but we cannot forget financial speculation,” he continued, explaining how both global warming drives world hunger, as well as speculators who drive up market prices of basic foods such as grains, rice and soybeans purely for their own economic gain.

“It is unsettling to know that a good portion of agricultural products end up used for other purposes, maybe good, but that are not immediate needs of the hungry,” he said.

Here is a lamentable historical fact to consider when reflecting upon a recent cruel proposal of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner to deny heat and air conditioning assistance to the poor: In 1995, a severe heat wave in Chicago caused approximately 750 deaths among residents who could not afford air conditioning.

Illinois has one of the largest debts among US states, with billions of dollars in additional unfunded liability. The state legislature - which is currently controlled by Democrats - is wrangling over a budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. Rauner is threatening to veto the proposed Democratic state financial plan because it includes a projected deficit, which the Democrats want to resolve at a later date.

Rauner, who champions austerity for the poor and working class while promoting economic incentives for corporations, appears largely indifferent to the lesson of 1995 in Chicago. Indeed, according to The Chicago Tribune, the governor is proposing saving a paltry "$90 to $95 million a year" by denying energy subsidies to the poor and elderly to pay for air conditioning and heat:

The governor's plan to withhold state money that helps poor residents pay their electric and gas bills was met with concern and resistance Thursday [June 11] at a hearing in Chicago.

Seniors, people with disabilities and parents of young children shared stories of hardship at the Loop hearing, saying in written or oral testimony that they rely on the money to heat and cool their homes during frigid Illinois winters and sweltering summers. The program, they said, also helps preserve basic decencies such as the ability to cook, refrigerate food, wash clothes and take a hot shower.

Hawaii enacted a law this week that mandates that all of the state’s electricity comes from renewable sources no later than 2045. The bill makes Hawaii the first U.S. state to adopt such a standard. This renewable energy standard is being hailed as “the most aggressive clean energy goal in the country.”

“Hawaii is making history, not only for the islands, but for the planet,” said Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Blue Planet Foundation. “We are making a promise to future generations that their lives will be powered not by climate-changing fossil fuel, but by clean, local and sustainable sources of energy.”

The legislation was drafted by Blue Planet Foundation, whose mission is “to clear the path for 100 percent clean energy.” Many believe Hawaii can reach the goal well before 2045 because the islands are already a renewable energy leader. “Analyses from the utility and elsewhere show that 100 percent renewable energy can be achieved even earlier than 2045, by 2030,” says Blue Planet Foundation. “Hawaii’s renewable energy use has doubled in the past five years, with the islands currently generating about 22 percent of their electricity from wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy resources.”

“He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows, was out of control during the incident.”

And cellphone videos continue to unravel America’s “law and order” paradigm. You might almost call it the cellphone revolution, as random video clips keep exposing a dark side of our social order that used to be so easy to deny. YouTube has become the gateway to our collective conscience, such as it is.

Nobody was killed in the latest racism-tinged clip of policing malfeasance to go viral — the disrupted pool party in McKinney, Texas — but once again a disturbing buzz permeates the nation, as . . . huh? … a profanity-spewing police officer is shown flinging a teenage girl in a bathing suit to the ground and grinding his knee into her back as he handcuffs her, then pulling out his handgun and waving it menacingly at several teenage boys, also wearing bathing suits and obviously unarmed, all because . . . the (African-American) kids were noisy, and maybe some of them didn’t have permission to be swimming at this particular public pool in a mostly white subdivision?

The usual defenses of such actions — “he was just doing his job” or “they didn’t comply with his orders” — fall short of the mark. The officer, Eric Casebolt, who in 2008 had won his department’s Patrolman of the Year award, was suspended shortly after the video went public and a few days later resigned from the force. His chief, Greg Conley (quoted above), condemned his behavior at the scene; and even the Fraternal Order of Police, generally supportive of every act of police brutality, criticized not the waving of a gun at kids in bathing suits but his “use of profanity.”

None of these official condemnations closes the case. There are too many searing questions raised by this pool-party video for it to be buried and forgotten, and it fits too jarringly into an emerging national context as new as the social media and, at the same time, 400 years in the making: In America, if you’re black, you’re automatically the enemy. If you’re black, you lose. The law is not on your side.

California needs more water not a pricey water bar. (Photo: Joyce Cory)

The idea of a gourmet water bar - with prices as high as $20 a bottle - sounds like the punch line to a bad joke about drought-stricken California. However, it's for real.

According to an article in Yahoo Finance, the Ray's and Stark Bar in Los Angeles has a 46-page menu of bottled water and is a rousing financial success. Yahoo Finance describes the bar's growth since it opened two years ago:

Business at the bar has jumped 500% and his [the manager's] water menu has expanded to two other locations, including the Hollywood Bowl. His $50 per person water tasting class has sold out each session since it began this year.

“[Customers] are going into the water menu, looking for different springs, saying ‘I like this, this has so much sodium, this has so much magnesium,’” he says.